The Real Reasons For the Iran Agreement
Paul Craig Roberts
Obama is being praised as a man of peace
for the nuclear agreement with Iran. Some are asking if Obama will take the
next step and repair US-Russian relations and bring the Ukrainian imbroglio to
an end?
If so he hasn’t told Assistant Secretary
of State Victoria Nuland or his nominee as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Air Force General Paul Selva, or his nominee as Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, or his Secretary of the Air
Force, Deborah Lee James.
The other day on Ukrainian TV Victoria
Nuland declared that if Russia does not “fulfill its obligations,” by which she
means to turn all of Ukraine over to Washington including Crimea, a historical
Russian province, “we’re prepared to put more pressure on Russia.” During the
past week both of Obama’s nominees to the top military positions told the US
Senate that Russia was the main threat to the US, an “existential threat” even.
With this level of war rhetoric in play, clearly Obama has no interest in
reducing the tensions that Washington has created with Russia.
In my last column I wrote that the
agreement with Iran does not mean much, because Washington can renew the
sanctions at any time merely by making false charges against Iran. Obama knows
this even if Lindsey Graham and John McCain pretend that they don’t know it.
The US and its proxies continue to
murder people over a large area of the earth. Clearly Obama is not a man of
peace, and neither are his European enablers and the United Nations. So what is
the reason for the accommodation with Iran after many years of rabid
demonization of a country for no other reason than the country insisted on its
rights to nuclear energy granted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
If you can free yourself from the
brainwashing from the presstitute media, three BIG reasons jump out at you. One
is that the neoconservatives’ perception of the threat has shifted from “Muslim
terrorists” to Russia and China. Unlike Muslim terrorists, both Russia and
China are constraints on Washington’s unilateralism. Since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, Washington has grown accustomed to being the Uni-Power, able to
exercise its will unchallenged in the world. The rise of Russian strength under
Putin and Chinese strength under the new policy has destroyed Washington’s
Uni-Power privilege. Washington wants the privilege back.
Washington is not in good shape,
economically or militarily. According to Nobel Economist Joseph Stieglitz and
Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes, Washington has wasted at least
$6 trillion dollars in its 14-year old wars in the Middle East. Despite the
extraordinary cost, Washington has been defeated, and is now faced with the
Islamic State, a new entity arising out of Washington’s mistakes that is
creating a new country partly out of Iraq and partly out of Syria.
Despite its gigantic hubris, Washington
has figured out that the US cannot simultaneously take on Russia, China, Iran,
and the Islamic State. This realization is one reason for the nuclear agreement
with Iran. It removes Iran from the mix.
A second reason for the agreement is
that Iran is opposed to the Islamic State and can be employed as an American
proxy against the Islamic State, thus freeing Washington for conflict with
Russia and China.
A third reason for Washington’s
agreement with Iran is Washington’s concern with Europe’s energy dependence on
Russia. This dependence is inconsistent with the EU going along with
Washington’s sanctions against Russia and with NATO’s military moves against
Russia. Washington wants to end this dependence and has hopes that money can
bring Iran into becoming a supplier of natural gas and oil to Europe.
The explanation I have provided is
realism, not cynicism. All that the agreement with Iran means is that
Washington has belatedly realized that the concocted Iranian and Muslim threats
are using up time, energy, and resources that Washington needs to apply to
Russia and China. Moreover, there were too many threats for the American people
to know which was paramount.
One of the reasons that Greece has to be
destroyed is to block the entry of Russian natural gas into Europe from the
Russian pipeline into Turkey.
Washington has US troops in Ukraine
training the Ukrainian military how to subdue the break-away provinces, and the
stooge Ukrainian government has taken no steps to comply with the Minsk
Agreement. Clearly Washington intends that peace is not in the cards in
Ukrainian-Russian relations.
At some point Russia will have to accept
defeat or else stop contributing to its own defeat. On more than one occasion
when the Russian break-away provinces had the Ukrainian military totally
defeated, the Russian government intervened and prevented the collapse of the
Ukrainian military. For its consideration, Russia has been rewarded with more
demonization and with US aid to the Ukrainian military. When hostilities
resume, which they will, Russia and the break-away Russian provinces will find
themselves in a worsened position.
The Russian government cannot pursue
peace when Washington is pursuing War.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators
Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have
attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books areThe Failure
of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
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